AMA - Ask Microsoft & MVP's Anything

Join Microsoft experts for an interactive Q&A about Microsoft 365, Power Platform, SharePoint, OneDrive, Viva, Teams, Microsoft Graph and more! Bring your best questions!

Create a no-code Azure Chat Bot for use in Microsoft Teams, Outlook & SharePoint

In this session, you will learn how to create a Chat Bot for your organization and add it to Teams, Outlook or even SharePoint. The bot will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to answer questions and improve knowledge sharing. You can use it aid users during annual benefits open enrollment, answer Office 365 frequently-asked questions, recommend IT helpdesk self-service support articles, etc. You’ll leave the session with instructions on how to built the bot. No developer skills required!

Create a no-code Azure Chat Bot for use in Microsoft Teams!

In this session, you will learn how to create a Chat Bot for your organization and add it to Teams. The bot will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to answer questions and improve knowledge sharing. You can use it to aid users during annual benefits open enrollment, answer Office 365 frequently asked questions, recommend IT helpdesk self-service support articles, etc. You’ll leave the session with instructions on how to build the bot. No developer skills required!

Ask Microsoft Anything & SharePint

Join Microsoft's experts for an interactive Q&A about Microsoft 365, Power Platform, SharePoint, OneDrive, Viva, Teams, Microsoft Fabric and more! Bring your best questions! Refreshments and pizza will be provided.

Being Purposeful with Viva

The Viva platform is growing with new functionality being routinely released. To successfully implement the platform it should be driven by purpose with clear alignment to the goals of the organization. Let's discuss what assessments and evaluations should be completed on your organization before, during, and after implementation. We'll review some key components to consider such as an organization's culture, leadership mindset, strategy, goals, technology infrastructure, and resources for the implementation. This will be an interactive session meant to help stimulate the way you think about the implementation of Viva.

Detangling SharePoint Online Site Collections versus Office 365 Site Collections

How do I manage the chaos? Where do I administer my sites? How can I get access to them? Where can I find analytics? How can I audit and control this mess?

Digital Transformation Journey with Office 365!

Learn how the cloud has changed how we connect, collaborate and consume in the workplace.

Going with Flow Deeper Dive for the Admin

Flow admin portal overview for administrators to review environments, data groups, data loss prevention, securing connectors, auditing and reporting.

Going with the Flow in SharePoint Online!

Come and learn about Microsoft Flow, a browser-based workflow tool that makes it simple to automate tasks across your Office 365 applications and many other business/social connectors. We will walk through what Flow is, show you how to start a Flow, and look at a real-world example of how Flow can be used to manage an approval process. Come learn how Flow can revolutionize business automation and approval workflows!

Going with the Flow on your SharePoint Online modern list!

Real-world examples on using flow to create an approval process!

Manage the mess: Building an organizational strategy for pinned apps in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams continues to be the work zone for employees. Integration with SharePoint, Microsoft Viva, Lists, Planner, OneNote, etc. make it possible to live and work inside of Teams all day. Managing the prime-time real estate of pinned apps in Teams can be challenging, especially as your employees' list of critical apps grows. How do you prioritize which apps get pinned for all users? And should you leave open navigation space so users can select their own favorite apps to pin?

In this session, we'll examine sizing and use of the Teams navigation bar. We'll discuss organizing principles, talk about types of models (pre-selected app pinning vs. employee self-service pinning) that may work for your organization, and give you tips on how to prioritize Teams navigation icons.

Managing Change in a Microsoft world!

Office 365 governance and change management. How to best operationalize your Office 365 tenant by defining roles and responsibilities and best communicate and administer changes.

Managing Change in a Microsoft World! Office 365 Governance and Change Management.

This session will focus on how to best operationalize your Office 365 investment. We will walk through how to develop a governance board focusing on tenant and service management, define roles and responsibilities, learn how to manage change in a SAAS solution that uses an evergreen service management model, and develop a system of communication to better support your customers.

Delivered to SPS Omaha 2018, SPSTC 2018 and SPS San Diego 2019.

Microsoft 365 Governance for Large Organizations: Why Task Force Teams are Critical to your Success!

Come and learn how to best operationalize your Microsoft 365 investment by defining roles and responsibilities, creating a governance board to broaden knowledge through-out your organization, and react to service and tenant management by developing task force teams. You will learn why task force teams are critical to your success and how you can take these real-world examples and bring them back to your organization.

Managing Change in Microsoft 365

Everyone in your organization just received a cool new feature in Microsoft 365 – and you were the last to know! As Microsoft continuously rolls out new features and enhancements to help us work better, it can be a challenging for the IT department to keep up. Learn how to stay on top of new features so you can highlight the latest and greatest offerings, while maintaining control of your environment and communications.

Microsoft Community Booth

Visit the Microsoft Community Booth and connect with speakers from Microsoft and MVPs in person and a Meet & Greet with Microsoft's Adam Harmetz and Karuana Gatimu! Your chance to engage, learn, and be inspired awaits at the Microsoft Community Booth.

Microsoft AMA + SharePint

Got a burning question you just can't yet find an answer to? This AMA is to be a lively live hour of Q&A - to ask questions and voice feedback - direct to the product teams across OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Viva, Syntex, Yammer, Power Platform, and more.
And then enjoy pizza and casual networking with all.
You'll come in scratching your head and leave with a head full of answers, and maybe a belly full of 'za.

Microsoft Teams in a Regulated Environment

Come learn how you can deploy, use, and achieve success with Teams in a regulated environment.
In this session we will show you the strategies and technologies you need to succeed.
You will learn:
- Governance Strategies
- Compliance & Records Management
- Security Options
- Monitoring & Auditing Capabilities
- Training and Enablement

Morning Keynote: What is the MVP Program - learn from past and present MN MVP's

Come and listen to Minnesota's MVP Community and learn about the program, their journey, and how it has made an impact in their lives. Wes Preston, Richard Brynteson, Maria Barnes, Melanie Hohertz, Doug Wilson, Dean Swann, Michelle Gilbert, Liz Sundet, and Sarah Haase.

Power User's Guide to Office 365. The "Waffle" is not just a breakfast food anymore!

Office 365 introduction to the many apps ad how they all integrate.

Power User's Guide to Office 365. The "Waffle" is not just a breakfast food anymore!

Office 365 introduction to the many apps and how they all integrate.

Rule how and when you receive Office 365 changes.

Overview of Microsoft's feature deployment Release channels of Office 365 and how you can control when your users receive updates. Deep dive into understanding O365 changes, releases and channel updates.

SharePoint Change Management - Use Flow to make your life easier!

Having a hard time keeping up with SharePoint changes? This session is for you! I will provide you with an automatic process to send the updates that you care about to a SharePoint list using Microsoft Flow.

Teams - Ask Microsoft Anything

Come spend some time with us over lunch to Ask Microsoft Anything about Teams!

The Admins Guide to Controlling Access in O365

Securing your cloud access - The Person; The Location; The Device.

Women in Technology Discussion Panel

Contribute to the women in technology session.

Ultimate guide to administering M365 and Teams

Are you an admin who's been administering M365 for years? Or are you brand new to the admin role? Either way, there will be something for you in this workshop!

We will be taking a deep look into the administration of M365 and some of its services, with a heavy focus on Teams, using the admin center, PowerShell, Graph, and more. Expect deep explainers on what different switches really do, and practical advice on how to configure things appropriately for your organization.

We will spend time in this workshop setting up automations together and sharing real world examples of how to make your job easier.

Top 10 best practices every Admin should be doing in M365!

Come and learn the top 10 best practices you should be doing to both manage and secure your environment. Tenant configuration can be a balance of usability and security when planning your roll-out or management model.

These best practices will assist you in improving visibility into M365 and help you understand the necessary controls needed to have in place to ensure your tenant is protected.

The Art of Prompt Engineering in Copilot for M365

The art of prompt engineering of M365 Copilot is the skill of creating effective and clear instructions or questions that tell M365 Copilot what you want it to do for you.

M365 Copilot will then use its large language model to generate a summary based on your prompt. Prompt engineering helps you collaborate with M365 Copilot by following up on your prompts with more questions or feedback, which can help M365 Copilot learn from your preferences and improve its suggestions over time.

If you want to learn more about prompt engineering this session is for you as we will learn the essential ingredients of a prompt and how to properly communicate with semantic index and connect to our data.

Roundtable Discussion - Copilot for real world productivity

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Round Table Discussions is a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot

Join this session to learn more about the future of work with Microsoft 365 Copilot that can help you work better by unleashing your creativity, unlocking productivity, and upleveling your skills.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a new feature that combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more—and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into a powerful productivity tool. It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more—to unleash creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel skills. Copilot provides real-time intelligent assistance and enables users to enhance their creativity, productivity, and skills.

M365 Copilot is also a new Teams app experience. It works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts—to do things you’ve never been able to do before.

Keynote: AI in Microsoft 365

Join Michelle Gilbert as she cover's all the latest Copilot and AI innovations in Microsoft 365, including what to expect in the future.

AMA - Ask Microsoft Anything and SharePint

Join Microsoft's experts for an interactive Q&A about Microsoft 365, Power Platform, SharePoint, OneDrive, Viva, Teams, Microsoft Graph and more! Bring your best questions! Refreshments and pizza will be provided.

Improve your personal productivity in Teams

Come and learn some ways to reduce the noise and make Teams work for you. Walk away with tips to organize your teams, channels, chat, and notifications that will be more effective and help you feel more productive.

Microsoft Viva Topics

Come and learn all about Microsoft's new AI based knowledge management tool!

Microsoft Teams Top 10 Decisions for Rapid Deployment

Come and learn the top 10 decisions your organization needs to make to roll-out Teams for rapid deployment.

Women in Technology Discussion Panel

Join us for an interactive discussion about Women in Technology

Top 10 best practices every Admin should be doing in M365!

Come and learn the top 10 best practices you should be doing to both manage and secure your environment. Tenant configuration can be a balance of usability and security when planning your roll-out or management model. These best practices will assist you in improving visibility into M365 and help you understand the necessary controls needed to have in place to ensure your tenant is protected.

Microsoft Teams Public and Private Channels

This session will provide you with the fundamentals of Microsoft Teams and Channels. Teams are a collection of people, content, and tools surrounding different projects and outcomes within an organization. They can be public or private, come and learn the differences between them and how you can expand your tabs with apps to make them work for you.

Create a Governance Board team in Microsoft Teams!

Come and learn how to create a governance board team in Microsoft Teams. You will learn how to create value-add channels focusing on various governance topics like monitoring of service health dashboard, user voice feedback, security projects including secure score, message center digest, usage analytics and more all within Microsoft Teams. The governance board Team will be your new centralized location to manage change, monitor and improve communication through channel conversations.

Create a Curated Experience in Teams!

You will learn the needs of generational workforces and how to create curated experiences in Teams based on your organization's personas. You will see how four diverse types of employee's experiences in Teams have unique needs: Deployment Team; Information Workers; Firstline Workers; and Executives. And learn to apply policies and settings that matter to them.

Navigating the Complexities of Hybrid Work

The past couple of years has fundamentally transformed employee and customer experiences and expectations. And there’s no going back. Learn about Microsoft’s approach, new operating model, lessons we’re learning along the way, and how we can help you empower your employees and meet new customer needs as you navigate hybrid work.

Deep Dive in enabling Microsoft Teams Connect - Shared Channels

Shared channels enables multiple orgs to work together as one team in a shared space for a more structured, deeper and longer-term collaboration. Chat, call, meet, share and co-author files, and collaborate on apps. This session will focus on how to enable Teams Connect using cross-tenant access settings to manage collaboration with external Azure AD organizations using the new Direct B2B Connect architecture model.

Modern Work Architecture - From the Core to Professional Self

Learn how Microsoft is empowering employee experiences at the core, creativity of personal and team productivity, connection to community and leaders, and your professional experiences. You will walk away with a new sense of Modern Work Architecture that envisions where work gets done and what matters to you and employees you may support.

M365 Copilot

Join our deep dive to learn more about accelerating your productivity, unleashing your creativity and uplevelling your skills with Microsoft 365 Copilot. We'll include answering your questions on the governance and management of these AI driven experiences.

Create an engaged and productive workforce with Microsoft Viva

Microsoft Viva empowers organizations with next-generation AI and insights to continuously improve engagement and productivity - bringing together the tools and applications to align goals, employee communications, workplace analytics and employee feedback, and learning for everyone in your organization. ​And best of all, Viva works in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365, is personalized, customizable and extensible. ​In this session, we’ll explore how Viva puts people at the center, connecting them to company information, communications, workplace insights, knowledge and learning - sharing latest innovations and addressing your open questions.

Which Role When? Guidance for assigning M365 administrative roles.

When Office 365 began there were two roles: User and Global Admin (GA). This left a huge security risk in organizations with administrators having the keys to the kingdom without the knowledge or understanding of the risk. Come and learn about the many roles and how assigning granular or least permissive roles will improve your security posture.

Reduce your Risk and Increase your Security Posture with Microsoft Secure Score!

Do you need increased visibility and control over your organization's security posture in Microsoft 365? You do not need to wait any longer, begin assessing your M365 security telemetry now with Microsoft Secure Score. Come and learn how to best manage and monitor your identity, data, device, app, and infrastructure to improve security from a centralized dashboard. Understand the improvement activities recommended and learn how to work to complete them. Threats arise every day in the cloud, configure your tenant to ensure your organization is protected.

What's New and Coming for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams continues to evolve to be the hub for teamwork and we're excited to share new functionality that helps people do their best work. Come and learn the new features we have rolled out and stay on top of change.

Improve your security posture of Microsoft Teams using Microsoft Secure Score

Protect your organization from threats by measuring your organizations security posture of Microsoft Teams and learn Microsoft's recommendations of new improvement actions you can take in Secure Score. In this session you will learn the overview of Secure Score and the latest actions you should monitor and take action on to protect your environment from threats.

End to End Deployment of Viva Connections

In this session, you will see the creation of a SharePoint Communication Site from the SharePoint Look Book as your Intranet. The step-by-step guide to setting up Viva Connections as a first party app for Teams desktop and mobile deploying without using PowerShell. Walking through enablement of SharePoint home site, global navigation, configuring app permission and setup policies, and pinning the app to the side rail in Teams. And a peak at the new dashboard. You will learn how easy it is to create Viva Connections for your organization.

Going with the Flow in SharePoint Online!

This course is a comprehensive introduction to Microsoft Flow and how SharePoint and Flow connect. Ending with real-world examples on using Flow to create an approval process.

Delivered to SPSTC 2018, MN M365 User Group 2018.

Managing Change in a Microsoft World! Office 365 Governance and Change Management.

This session will focus on how to best operationalize your Office 365 investment. We will walk through how to develop a governance board focusing on tenant and service management, define roles and responsibilities, learn how to manage change in a SAAS solution that uses an evergreen service management model, and develop a system of communication to better support your customers.

Previously presented in 1:many customer workshops in the Midwest region 2021; Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon May, 2020; SharePoint Saturday Ottawa May, 2019; SharePoint Saturday San Diego Jan, 2019; and SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities Nov, 2018.